11. Keith Locke (Green)
to the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade: When will the level of Government overseas aid reach the level of 0.5 percent of gross national income achieved by the 1972-75 Labour Government in 1975?
Hon Phil Goff
(Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade): No specific date has been set in respect of the figure of 0.5 percent. However, I can tell the member that incorporating the tsunami package, aid levels this year will, for the first time ever, exceed $300 million. That represents about 0.27 percent of gross national income, and that is the highest level that New Zealand has achieved since the mid-1980s. In increasing aid, our focus has been on the quality of that assistance, in particular the effectiveness and the efficiency ofits delivery, and ensuring that it goes to the people who most need it. As we increase our aid, we need to ensure that those safety factors are in place.
Keith Locke:
When will the Minister be building on that achievement he has just mentioned and announce a timetable to reach the 0.7 percent of gross national income (GNI) towards overseas aid by 2015, as the Government promised to do a couple of years ago at the UN millennium summit, and as it is asked to do in a petition announced today by the New Zealand Council for International Development?
Hon Phil Goff:
The figure of 0.7.percent remains the internationally accepted target. Most countries have not come anywhere near achieving that yet. New Zealand will endeavour to increase its aid; it does so as part of its budgetary package, but, of course, we have to put this key desire and objective against other desires and objectives such as improving our own situation in health, education, and other such fields.
Keith Locke:
I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. My question specifically asked when the Government would be announcing a timetable. The Minister did not actually address that point.
Mr Speaker:
: That is correct. The Minister will briefly touch on that point only.
Hon Phil Goff:
In fact, I answered that in reply to the first question when I said that no specific timetable had been set.
Luamanuvao Winnie Laban:
What feedback has New Zealand received on the reorganisation ofits development assistance body, and the quality of the aid it is delivering?
Hon Phil Goff:
NZAID is currently-
Dr the Hon Lockwood Smith:
It is very bad in Tonga.
Hon Phil Goff:
I do not know what the member is talking about, and I do not think he does. NZAID is currently the subject of review by the OECD body responsible for development assistance. That body is yet to report. But the informal advice that I have is that its findings are very strongly positive about NZAID and the very high quality of the work that it does. Naturally I would expect the report will also encourage New Zealand, having got its structure right and having got the quality of its delivery where it should be, to consider further raising its level of assistance. I hope we can.
Mr Speaker:
: There were some interjections in the second person that were not very savoury. They should not be made.
Keith Locke:
Why is the Government allowing, given the respect the Minister has just shown for the OECD, New Zealand to languish in the bottom third of the OECD in regard to its aid commitment, particularly when Rae Julian wrote in this morning’s Dominion Post: “Next week, the same number of people will die from poverty as died in the tsunami.”?
Hon Phil Goff:
The OECD body is, of course, the body of the 22 most wealthy countries in bottom of that table. Yes, we are getting our growth right, and we are strengthening our economy. I hope that those things will enable us to do a lot more in the aid area, because what we do in the aid area now is really effective and worthwhile.
Keith Locke:
Does the Minister feel that because of the wave of public support for the Government increasing its aid for those affected by the tsunami, if it did establish a timetable to rapidly get to .07 percent of GNI into aid that would have public support?
Hon Phil Goff:
I think that if most New Zealanders, having shown their generosity over the tsunami, recognised the plight of people in the developing world and of those as close to us at home as the Pacific, saw what we were actually achieving through development assistance, they would be very supportive of this Government and its efforts to increase that level.